Entries tagged with i can't even

I ended up going with Scott to take Cordelia and her friend to the restaurant. The plan was that I'd wait wherever he and I ended up for dinner until after he took the 3-4 kids to the dance. We had trouble finding a restaurant and ended up at Seva, a vegetarian place. We tend not to go there because my food options are severely limited by needing to avoid tomatoes and peppers and walnuts and peanuts and eggs.

I ended up ordering a cup of soup and two sides, asparagus and sweet potato fries. The soup wasn't edible by me, and Scott didn't care for it either. The menu said 'butternut-apple bisque,' and I couldn't taste either apples or butternut squash. It went more toward the savory end of flavor, and I couldn't place the herbs, so I didn't force myself to eat more than a couple of spoonfuls. I was concerned that the soup contained something that would make me sick. The restaurant ended up removing the soup from our bill. We hadn't asked them to. I'd have been cranky about spending $4 on a cup of inedible soup, but I did order it, so...

I also got dessert, banana cheesecake. It was recognizably cheesecake, but even though I could see banana chunks, I couldn't taste the banana at all. Scott tried it and also couldn't taste the banana, so I'm again puzzled. I think that, when something with a particular flavor is in the name, it's weird not to be able to taste even a trace of that in the food.

Cordelia's only comment about the dance was that it was loud and that the music was terrible. I'm not sure if the latter refers to sound quality or to song choice.

Scott's parents have reserved a house for a family vacation next summer. They didn't consult with us about potential conflicts first but did consult Scott's brother and sister, so we're a bit puzzled. We won't know for at least another month whether or not Scott can get that time off, and I'm pretty sure that the timing will mean that Cordelia couldn't do choir camp even if she wanted to. (Though Scott thinks the location of the house is actually kind of near Interlochen.) Scott's parents have promised to 'help' us with the costs but want us to tell them how much we can afford to pay. Which is both reasonable and burdensome because Scott finds it shaming.

To be honest, I'm not sure we can afford anything but gas money and our share of the groceries. I'm not convinced that Scott will be able to tell his parents that. He was able to say, months ago, that we couldn't go because we couldn't afford it. Now, we can't just not do it. We have to figure out what we can scrape together and ask for the rest. I understand why Scott's parents want everyone there. They're both 75 (and will be 76 next summer), and their oldest grandchild is 18 and in college. The odds of getting him to come to future family vacations aren't really all that great. The odds of Scott's parents being up to such a vacation in three years, five years, ten years... Yeah.

Is it weird that I feel that 'tell us what you can afford, and we'll cover the rest' is more embarrassing than 'because you can't afford it, we'll cover the expenses'?

Posting my Captive Audience fic involved a bit of unexpected stress-- It posted to the collection and with the correct recipient, but it posted revealed and with my name attached. The folks at AO3 were able to fix it quickly (but only because someone was online right then who could), but they say they have no idea why it happened.

So my recipient must have received a notice that told them the title, fandom, and author of their giftfic a week before the reveals. I feel bad about that getting spoiled for them and then them having to wait a week (unless they got in really, really fast which is not impossible) to read it, but the story isn't quite ready to be revealed yet. If I can't polish it further, it will do, but it's not where I want it to be, and I really am hoping that, after Cordelia leaves for school on Tuesday, I'll be able to relax a bit.

I'm going to work on reading some library books that I want to/need to return tomorrow and see if I can get my head to clear.

Has anyone here ever had issues with coins not surviving going through the laundry? I assumed, at first, that I was seeing some sort of play money* what with the dimes ending up looking the way they do-- They're smaller in circumference and have the outermost edge about twice as thick as the center in a slightly irregular way that looks like they've been smushed. Quarters come out looking right except that the ridging on the edges is completely gone. I think pennies are going the same way as dimes, and I haven't seen a nickel going through yet.

I'm trying to figure out how this can happen without whatever's doing it completely destroying our clothes or, you know, affecting them somehow. All the clothing seems to be fine.

Our washer and dryer are about twenty years old. We bought them new when we bought the house. The dryer uses natural gas.

I'm feeling a good bit better today. I'm still being very cautious about what I eat. I was okay with tea and toast (with margarine, even!), but a little turkey lunch meat (nitrate and nitrite free) made me feel really terrible. I probably would have tried making rice if it hadn't been a Thursday or if I hadn't slept so late. Scott picked up some Cup o' Soup packets, some saltines, and some ginger ale for me. I would like to keep saltines around all the time for this sort of thing, but if we have them in the house, Scott devours them with margarine and then complains about the calories and how we shouldn't have such things in the house.

I've been sneezing and sniffling off and on. It'll be bad for five to ten minutes and then not there at all for half an hour and then come back again.

My sleep last night wasn't as good as I had hoped. I spent the last three or four hours convinced that I needed to get up to take medication every hour on the hour which was decidedly not true. I didn't need to take anything until a little after 5:00 when Scott's alarm went off.

Scott dug up a PDF of the Firefly character sheet. Unfortunately, it's not possible to save it after one fills it out; one can only print. I was going to put in what I've established so far and save for later editing when Scott was available, but I can't. I'm not sure it's useful to fill in what I have so far and print that when I'll have to retype it all later. I should see if Scott has a PDF of the game rules. If he does, I might be able to make the character on my own. The game book is too heavy for me.

I've written about 3000 words so far this month. I've spent most of my writing time editing rather than writing new text. I have a friend doing a beta read on my Fandom5K story. I haven't looked at her comments yet, but I get the impression that she might be looking for a different sort of story than the one I've written. That will make dealing with the comments harder because I'll have to weigh half a dozen different factors in deciding what to do in response to each or if I'm going to do anything at all.

We got a weird phone call yesterday that I'm quite sure was some sort of scam. Scott agrees, but we disagree about what it was trying to do. The caller ID said the call came from Comcast, an 800 number, and it was a recorded thing telling us that we have a service call scheduled today between 4:00 and 5:00. I'm pretty sure that they were trying to get me to talk to an 'operator' and give them personal information. Scott thinks it's a setup to try to get me to let some stranger in. I suppose the latter is possible, but I'm not convinced that it would work better than just showing up cold. Also, showing up personally is a much bigger risk and investment than phishing phone calls.

The idea of getting a call from an 800 is just-- That's not how it works.

If I wasn't fighting so hard to get through today, I'd probably call Comcast and report the call. Maybe they'd actually care that someone is spoofing their ID. Of course, it's Comcast...

And the nurse doing the screening at UHS says I'm to go to the ER. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. I've called my SIL who is going to call my MIL. I don't want to call Scott because he doesn't have time to take off work and because I'm pretty sure this is nothing at all. It's just that the nurse said that heart attacks in women manifest in weird ways and that this might actually be that.

I'm packing up some things and will then call a cab because it will be at least an hour before my MIL can get to Ann Arbor (it would take Scott nearly that long to get home, too).

I will update when I know more.

ETA: Scott's sister is coming down because her parents only just got up. She's about half an hour away, so I'm not going to call a cab. A cab might save ten minutes, but it wouldn't be more than that and probably, at this time of day, would be less.

And I got three more troll comments on that one fic, all with the same signature and all three claiming that my use of the Zero Room contradicts canon. I can only shake my head and laugh because there's almost no canon about the Zero Room to contradict. I mean, I could say that turtles left in there too long turn purple. There's nothing in canon to say that that doesn't happen, so I should be golden, right?

Seriously, go be pedantic about a canon that doesn't contradict itself six ways about every bit of canon relating to technology and the made up history and culture. Shoo!

I got home to discover that some jerk on FFnet had left a series of comments on one of my fics that all pointed out what the commenter considered to be canonical errors. I was relatively cranky about it at first because it's not a story that tends to get many comments, so I was disappointed to get things that didn't even say the reader liked it.

But seriously? The complaints were all about details of Doctor Who canon which is like complaining about such things in, say, fic for Marvel comics (or DC comics). If you look far enough, you can find supporting canon for pretty much any sort of bizarre thing you want to throw in. One of the comments tried to tell me that regeneration only ever happens when a Time Lord is near death. But Romana canonically does it just because she feels like it when she goes from Romana I to Romana II. Another said that the Tardis doesn't ever get rid of rooms or move them.

So I'm now at the point of laughing. I have no idea what this person expected. Are they trying to prove that I'm not a trufan? Are they trying to humiliate me into never writing again? Do they actually think that this sort of thing is helpful and that I'll thank them and worship their wondrous grasp of canon? (I doubt it because they commented as a guest.)

Grrr. The sports medicine people just called to say that, oops!, they hadn’t actually looked at the referral from orthopedics and that Cordelia needs to see a surgeon rather than a regular doctor and that we can’t do that until the 30th. I feel like banging my head on something.

The 30th is a Thursday which, from Cordelia’s point of view, is the absolute worst day to have an appointment because of GSA.

Oh, and that’s Expo night, too, I think. Damn it. I may have to reschedule the appointment because, if surgery is the verdict, Cordelia’s not going to be capable of going to Expo. I’ve emailed her teachers to explain the situation. I’m not sure I actually care one way or another about Expo.

And my gynecologist does want to see me ASAP. She says some time on the 20th and that someone will call me to schedule more specifically. I really hope that that ends up at a time when I can get a friend or relative to go with me for moral support. I want to get that nailed down before I arrange for Cordelia’s PT, but I don’t know that I should wait on the PT.

I was just fairly unwise. After I dropped Cordelia off at school, I looked at my Ingress map and decided that I would try to get to a portal I hadn’t ever hacked before. It didn’t look all that far away. And then there were two more portals close-ish, but they were in a cemetery, so I had to find the gate (which was open). By the time I got home, I’d been walking for an hour and fifteen minutes. My Achille’s tendon despises me, and my sinuses are very upset with me because it’s about 35F out there. My sinuses and lungs still consider that cold.

This was an especially foolish thing for me to do because I have a doctor appointment this afternoon and because our cleaning lady comes this afternoon. Oh, and I still have to pick Cordelia up after school. Fortunately, most of what I need to do in the next three hours, I can do sitting down.

But three new to me portals! Yea?

This morning, I pulled a bag down from the very top shelf of my closet. I’d been wondering what it was for quite some time, but I’m too short to put anything up there myself, so I knew it had to be something Scott had stored. It turned out to be a very old present intended for Cordelia. It has to have been up there at least six years because she hasn’t been interested in doll kitchen sorts of things in quite a long time. There was a Wii game in there, too, (an I Spy thing) and a DS game that Cordelia says she’s still interested in (some sort of Star Wars game).

Now I have to figure out who we know who’s between three and seven who might be interested in the doll kitchen set. The younger of our two nieces in Seattle might be, but shipping it would be expensive. There’s a little girl locally who’ll be three in May. That’s only two months. I’ll ask her parents. I haven’t seen them or her in quite some time, so I’m not sure if the gift is something she’d want or that they’d want her to have.

Damn it all. Apparently I do have sleep apnea. I didn’t think it was possible because I didn’t have it last time they checked and am sleeping infinitely better now than I was then. If I’m actually able to spend eight or nine hours in my own bed at night and am not sick, I feel pretty good (by my standards).

But I wasn’t even borderline, apparently.

They want me to go in for another overnight but haven’t told me when yet. Scheduling that will be a PITA because of needing Scott to be home or to have some other adult here to supervise Cordelia. Scott needs a month to be sure of getting a day off, and they’ll still say no if someone else is scheduled off. At least Scott does currently have three vacation days to spend because they told him he couldn’t have the time he asked for next December.

I had to laugh. The library, among its new DVDs has an obvious Kung Fu Panda knockoff called The Adventures of the Panda Warrior. The part that made me laugh was the blurb which reads: "When Patrick, a peaceful soldier from ancient China, is magically transported to Merryland and tuned into a panda, he must join forces with Peggy the flying pig, GoGo the daring goat, and King Leo the courageous lion in order to free the once-peaceful world from the tyranny of the evil nine-headed snake that has enslaved them."

Because Patrick is a totally normal name for someone from Ancient China, right? I boggle only slightly less at the 'peaceful soldier' part.

Scott and I are currently sitting in a Panera in Livonia. We’re waiting for Cordelia to be done with something she’s doing. We’re to pick her up three hours from now. I’m a little sad to be in a town where I haven’t done any Ingress before without hacking any new to me portals, but I haven’t actually seen any, and driving around looking seems likely to be a lot less comfortable than sitting here with heat and internet access (and bathrooms and food/drinks…).

Apparently I am one of the unlucky people who has a bad reaction to melatonin supplements. We tried some Thursday evening (on medical recommendation). I’ve had a headache since about three hours after I took it (I woke, so I know). It’s almost gone now, but it was really nasty yesterday. Poking around on Google gave me a lot of hits that suggest that some people get headaches from melatonin supplements. I slept really, really soundly, though. It’s just that the trade off is not worthwhile. Of course, I’ve also been sneezing quite a lot, too (though that’s tapering off and being out of the house seems to be helping). I didn’t find much connecting that to melatonin, but who knows? When physical stuff starts immediately after I try something like that, I get suspicious.

Ah, well. Scott and Cordelia both seem to get considerable benefit, so what we bought won’t go to waste.

I’m pretty exhausted right now, and I expect I will be for at least the next week. I have two medical appointments next week, and I think I’ll probably have to go to a meeting at Cordelia’s school some afternoon.

I don’t think I’ve promised anyone here anything time sensitive. If I have, I apologize because it may not get done. I’m kind of thinking that I won’t have spoons for anything that’s not medical, school, or maintenance of the house/family. I may well be online, but I’ll be unable to do much that requires thought or focus. Thank goodness my Yuletide fic is already posted. I was considering making it longer, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s complete as is.

Only one person came over for our game session last night. The other three people all have colds they didn’t want to share with the rest of us. They also hoped that an early night would help them recover faster.

The three of us ended up playing a cooperative game Scott bought at UCon, Star Trek Panic. None of us had ever played before, so it’s likely we messed up the rules in ways that we didn’t even realize (there’s one way we messed up that we decided to keep for the session because trying to fix it, at the point when we realized, would have been difficult). The game is actually fairly difficult for the players to win. We just barely squeaked through to victory and wouldn’t have if we hadn’t misread the rules.

Cordelia’s homeroom teacher sent out an email this morning to let us know that representatives from some colleges in New England that do summer programs will be at Expo during the time before the eighth graders start presenting. I followed the links in the email, but none of the sites have concrete information about things like cost. I suppose that, if you have to ask about cost, you can’t afford the program.

And we had an actual bird in the house just now. I think it was a sparrow, but it was hugely panicked, so I didn’t get a good look. I opened the back door, and it eventually went out that way. I had to leave the room and wait for the sound of panicked tweeting and the bird banging into the windows stopped because there wasn’t a place I could stand that wouldn’t be too close to the door.

But how on earth did it get in? Scott left three hours ago, and Cordelia left an hour ago. We don’t have windows open because it’s about 35F outside. Even if we did, we have screens. I only started hearing the bird about five minutes before I saw it. I don’t think it came in when someone left and then stayed calm and quiet for a long time. I mean, I like that option better than I like the idea that we’ve got a hole somewhere that it was able to get in through. If a bird that size can get in, a chipmunk or a bat could. (We can’t stop mice because nothing stops mice.) And the hole could get bigger. The bird probably didn’t get in through the attic because there’s no way from the attic down into the house except a well sealed ceiling access.

::sighs:: And Comcast will now only let my cellphone and laptop use their service if I have the account number and Scott’s login information. Cordelia is still able to access the Comcast internet, so I have no idea why I can’t. Sadly, Scott didn’t write down that information where I could get at it and doesn’t remember it (I texted him at work and caught him on break). He suggested that I look on his laptop for the password, going to the Comcast account page, and the password is there, but it is, of course, encrypted and so not useful to me.

We still have Earthlink, so I can do DW/LJ and email, just not much else. I can’t do Slack or Imzy or Tumblr. Even Google is cranky about the Earthlink connection. It took about twenty minutes for my various email accounts to connect and download my messages.

I woke with a headache this morning, and Amerge and caffeine have only helped a very little bit. The headache had started before 4:30 this morning and got steadily worse. I’m really not sure what to do about it at this point. I’ve got nausea, so I’m reluctant to try naproxen. Maybe lying down with a cold pack would help…

I ended up letting the hold that expired yesterday go. Basically there was never a point when Scott had enough time to go downtown, and yesterday was terrible for me to try to go on my own. The whole morning, I waited for Comcast. Then I was talking to their support people and then recovering from that. By the time I could have managed it, Scott was home, and it was late enough that buses are rare (the frequency drops in half at 6 p.m.).

One friend came over last night, and we played Sentinels of the Multiverse. We went for a relatively easy villain and still had some major problems at first. We got very lucky on a couple of counts. I played the Wraith which is generally the easiest character for me to manage. Our guest played Legacy. I don’t remember what Scott played.

Scott’s parents are pressuring us to tell them which day we can spend with them. I suspect it will have to be Monday. Scott thinks that there’s only about a 40% chance he’ll have Saturday off and that, because he’s working 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. Saturday, he’s certain to get tapped if someone calls in or otherwise doesn’t show up. He’s definitely working on Sunday. Scott claims that we won’t stay late if we go on Monday. I’m not so sure he and I agree on 'early.' I would like to leave at 7:00 because that will get us home at 8:00.

Is there anyone in the universe who doesn’t loathe Comcast? They now claim that they never set up a service appointment for our address and don’t understand why we want one. The reference number they gave us for the appointment doesn’t connect to anything in their records. Are we sure we’ve checked all of the connections carefully enough? They said they can send someone on Tuesday.

I want to scream or cry or break things or something. I only swore once when I was chatting with the help guy, and it wasn’t really at him. But I want to.

It took me fifty minutes to get through to talk to someone because their website won’t load under our current internet, not as it’s running right this moment. But the site would take 20-30 minutes to error out, so I kept hoping. I ended up turning off my phone’s wifi and using the browser on that, but it meant trying to type on that which… Not the world’s most fun thing to do with stressed.

I’m worried that they’ll 'lose' this appointment, too, because I’m not technically on the account. They gave me a reference number, but they gave us one last night, too, so… Yeah. Meaningless.

There’s a school thing in two hours. I ought to go, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to. I’m sufficiently upset that going out and being around that many people would probably leave me gibbering. I’m going to try an Ativan, but I don’t know. I’ve never tried one when I’m stressed out because I’m thoroughly pissed off and have good reason to be upset.

Okay, I’ve been groggy all day, but I had eight ounces of orange juice with psyllium husks about an hour ago, and I’ve slowly started to feel better. I can’t have the psyllium within one hour, either direction, of taking medicine, though, so that’s not viable as an early morning thing.

Scott has been on the phone with Comcast for about three hours now. The difficulties getting our service going appear to be entirely bureaucratic and rather Catch-22 in nature. Scott’s talked to three or four different people without getting things sorted and is currently on hold. The impression I’m getting from listening is that the support people really don’t have any clue what to do with someone who’s trying to set up a bundled service.

Now Comcast is telling us that they thought we were at a different address (we’ve lived here for twenty years) and that we have a request for some sort of service on the outside line at this address. They also seem to have not closed our old account (which we asked them to do in June) even while they opened the new one, and the equipment got put on the old account and so couldn’t be activated under the new account.

We have an hour and a half left before the library closes. I have one hold to pick up, and it doesn’t expire until Wednesday, but I’d still like to get it today. We’ve got two DVD sets that must be returned before the library opens tomorrow, but that’s easy to do even after the library closes.

The laundry is washed, dried, and upstairs. The potatoes are still cooling. I’d have thought they’d cool faster than that. I suppose I could just shove them in the fridge, but that doesn’t seem necessary yet. I’ve made Scott’s sandwich, and I have navy beans soaking. I also spent a bit over an hour trying to nap before giving up on it.

The UPS guy came about ten minutes after I lay down. He had a package for Scott and said he was supposed to do a pick up, so I put the CD and paperwork in a bubble envelope and sealed it up and gave it to him. I can’t think of anything else he could possibly have been referring to. I really have no idea what’s going on with that.

In other news, the Ingress portal near Scott’s parents’ place that I’d been holding so long got wiped out a couple of hours ago. I was five days short of getting another level badge for it. That takes 90 days, and holding a portal that long is entirely luck and so doesn’t generally happen. I was really hoping to hold onto that one just another few days. I don’t think there’s anything else that I’ve captured and currently hold that I’ve had for more than a few days, and I’m pretty sure those are all in locations with a lot of Ingress traffic.

Scott has to go in early tomorrow morning. That means it really is on me to try to scrape together something for dinner. He simply won’t have time.

Okay, time to take something for this headache and see if black tea will help me wake up. I wonder if Cordelia would revolt if I asked her to take out all of the trash instead of her doing half while I do half?

The CD, of course, doesn’t play. That’s why I was sending it back. I guess I throw it out. But, you know, I’d have forgone the $7.50 to be able to shower and take a walk and all of that. Eleven hours of waiting is a lot.

Plus, now I have a real headache from dealing with online chat help at UPS and Amazon.

And now I get to come up with dinner for me and Cordelia. Ice cream with chocolate sauce is a completely valid option, right?

I’ve been up for about three hours, and I haven’t been able to get rid of my headache. I had it when I woke at 4:00 this morning. I slept more and reasonably soundly, but I’ve still got the dratted thing. I’ve taken Amerge and (just now) naproxen. I’ve had food and coffee both. I’m not sure what to do at this point.

My laptop may be on the verge of breaking down. The left side is heating up to the point that touching it is uncomfortable. It will cool down when I close things down for a while, but even just typing something like this will get it heating up again. Scott’s pretty unhappy about this because he can’t understand why my laptops don’t last as well as his. It’s probably because I’m using the stupid things for about fifteen hours a day every day.

I just bought a new CD, and my CD drive won’t read it. I had the same CD from the library, and that played fine. I’ll have to complain to Amazon and figure out how to return this one. I’m pretty sure it’s the CD rather than my laptop because I played another CD two minutes before I put this one in. I suppose I should try to get my laptop to cool down and try one more time. I need to shower anyway, and that should be long enough.

I did more writing yesterday, about 3000 new words, and some editing. The new words were on a completely different project that I’d had sitting around untouched for months, and I’m a little frustrated with them. I think this is where the story needs to go, but it’s not at all where I meant for it to go. This is why I will never, ever sign up for a gift exchange that’s pairing focused. I’m too likely to end up writing about how a particular couple doesn’t work immediately than about how happy they are which isn’t terrible if I’m writing for me or if that’s what the recipient wants, but many people don’t want that.

There was a major and very public shakeup at Scott’s work yesterday that ended with his supervisor having all of his authority removed and given to someone else. The supervisor still has the title and the paycheck, but he’s no longer making any decisions at all. His immediate supervisor will be doing it instead. They did this at the weekly after shift meeting without warning the supervisor that it was coming. Scott’s pretty sure that nobody’s got any actual plan for fixing the things that are wrong. He’s also fairly sure that the shit isn’t going to hit him and his coworkers. I’m less optimistic about that, but I also have a much less thorough understanding of how that division is structured and of what they actually do.

At any rate, the after shift meeting ran very long, a bit more than two hours. Scott had to drive home through rush hour traffic, so it took twice as long as normal. We ended up getting pizza (I ordered. Scott picked up) because Scott needed a treat. We had adequate leftovers, but he wanted some comfort food.

We’re not sure yet what the weekend is going to look like. Scott’s scheduled for 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. tomorrow, and he might end up stuck until 3 p.m. I’m hoping not because we’ve got a lot of things we need/want to do. Cordelia and I need haircuts (I tried to talk Cordelia into taking the bus with me to do that, but she balked). We might need to get someone to look at my laptop. Scott needs to see about upgrading his phone and passing the old one to Cordelia. That will be a little complicated because his old phone is an iPhone while Cordelia’s old one is an android. Then there’s the grocery shopping and the library. Oh, and Cordelia needs new gym shoes because they won’t let her wear shoes that have ever been worn anywhere but in gym. There was something else she needed, too, that she and I talked about looking for at the same time, but I can’t actually remember what it was.

We could do all of that on Sunday, but it would mean that we wouldn’t stop moving all day. Also, that I’d probably have to make some sort of detailed plan as to the order we’d do things in. Hm. Scott could do the groceries while Cordelia and I got our hair trimmed. Kroger is across the street from the place where we go for hair stuff. The Verizon store is on the way to Target which is probably still the best bet for gym shoes for Cordelia. The Apple store is in Briarwood which is far from anything else we need to do, and I don’t know if that’s what we need anyway. The library is also not near anything else but could, in theory, be a stop on the way to Briarwood or on the way back. I’ll have to look up hours for everything as the only one I know the hours for is the library.